About Us

UPS Compression Encoding is Supported

More Information:

IDAutomation
Maxicode barcode
products are based on the AIM ANSI/AIM BC10-ISS specification for
Maxicode. Compressed Maxicode is a text compression technique used by
UPS as a method of encoding greater
amounts of shipping data in a Maxicode symbol.

Users integrating compressed Maxicode with IDAutomation products
will need to obtain the compression specifications (or appropriate DLLs
from UPS) to convert the data into the compressed format and pass this
string directly to the component. A list of
Maxicode components is provided here. The compressed maxicode data
string contains hidden characters such as returns, line feeds and possibly
other low-level ASCII characters, which may be lost if the data is sent
to the component in a web application. The best solution in many cases
is to convert all characters except 0 to 9 and A to Z (and a to z) to
their tilde equivalents. Read more about using the tilde in the
Maxicode Barcode FAQ.

The string below is an example of a compressed Maxicode that will
image properly in web applications using the
Java Servlet,
Online Barcode
Creator or the
ASP Barcode Server for IIS. All characters except 0 to 9 and A to
Z (and a to z) should be converted to their tilde equivalents after
compression. The characters should be converted immediately after the
compression process directly, not by reading them from a file because
carriage returns and line feeds can be removed by editors such as Notepad.

Once the data is properly encoded in the compressed format, the UPS
barcode scanners and software will do the translating of the compressed
data when reading the symbol. To further clarify: IDAutomation barcode
products take the input data as-is and encode it directly in the barcode.
Without the UPS encoded barcode scanners and software,
generic market scanners
will interpret the encoded data exactly as it appears in the barcode
and render it back to the application as such.